Save the Planet! Kill the People!

On September 1, 2010, James Jay Lee entered the Discovery Channel corporate headquarters building in Silver Spring, Maryland and took three hostages at gunpoint, threatening to detonate his explosive-covered body. Following a nearly four-hour standoff, police shot and killed Lee without the hostages being harmed by the explosives or gunfire.

Since James Lee’s death, much has come to light about his radical environmental beliefs. Many in the mainstream media ignored or downplayed Lee’s previously posted environmental rants. (Lee posted a manifesto at savetheplanet.com prior to his hostile actions on September 1; see Lee, 2010). Some may justify disregarding Lee’s extreme human-hating, planet-saving views because he was delusional, or mentally ill, or simply because the global-warming, environmental movement should not be discredited on the basis of one man’s extreme actions. (The mainstream media, however, do not ignore the strongly held beliefs of a “Bible-believing,” delusional pro-lifer who bombs an abortion clinic.) Of course, it is true that the actions of a person should not discredit a particular belief system or religion, if the individual is acting in opposition to his or her beliefs. The fact is, however, Lee was actually taking environmental, evolutionary, atheistic beliefs to their logical conclusion.

Like a growing number of environmental, global-warming alarmists, James Lee made perfectly clear that the human population needs to be reduced drastically. In his pre-crusade post, Lee wrote about the “problem of human overpopulation,” saying, “the planet does not need humans” (Lee, 2010). “Saving the plant means saving what’s left of the non-human Wildlife by decreasing the Human population. That means stopping the human race from breeding any more disgusting human babies!... Nothing is more important than…saving the environment and the remaning [sic] species.” As if the Discovery Channel does not already heavily advocate the General Theory of Evolution, Lee emphasized how they must “[t]alk about Evolution…and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people’s brains...” (Lee, 2010).

For someone who rejects God and the Bible, but believes that humans (1) evolved by time and chance over millions of years, and (2) are currently wreaking havoc on the only known planet in the Universe that can support life, destroying human lives to save “Mother Earth” is perfectly rational. James Lee may have been mentally ill, but his flippant attitude about humanity and his willingness to end the lives of humans for the sake of Earth is perfectly consistent with atheistic, evolutionary beliefs.

At his “2006 Scientist of the Year” award ceremony in Beaumont, Texas, evolutionary ecologist Eric Pianka expressed his Lee-like concerns about human overpopulation. According to attendee Forrest Mims,

Professor Pianka said the Earth as we know it will not survive without drastic measures. Then, and without presenting any data to justify this number, he asserted that the only feasible solution to saving the Earth is to reduce the population to 10 percent of the present number.... His favorite candidate for eliminating 90 percent of the world’s population is airborne Ebola (Ebola Reston), because it is both highly lethal and it kills in days, instead of years.

Did Pianka release Ebola upon his audience? No. Did he take hostages as James Lee did in Silver Spring, Maryland? No. But, if he had, he merely would have been acting out what he and millions of atheistic evolutionists around the world believe: “We’re no better than bacteria!” (as quoted in Mims, 2006).

The truth is, humans are better than bacteria! We are better and more valuable than any plant or animal on Earth because God made us better. He created man “in his own image” (Genesis 1:27). He gave man an immortal soul (Zechariah 12:1; Matthew 10:28). And he gave man the responsibility, not to destroy human life to save the planet (Genesis 9:6), but to “fill the earth and subdue it” and “have dominion...over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:28).

For those who refuse to have God in their knowledge (Romans 1:28), life will forever be filled with the self-contradictory, unreasonable, inhumane lies of atheistic evolution. But, for those who “come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4), and embrace man’s God-given role on Earth, beliefs and actions will remain consistent, rational, and in harmony with God’s Word.

REFERENCES

Lee, James (2010), “The Discovery Channel Must Broadcast to the World Their Commitment to Save the Planet and to do the Following Immediately,” http://www.scribd.com/doc/36771069/Save-the-Planet-Protest-Com.

*Please keep in mind that Discovery articles are written for 3rd-6th graders.

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